No creature symbolizes the wild places of the world like the grey wolf (canis lupus). The grey wolf, also known as gray wolf or timber wolf, once roamed across much of the northern hemisphere but through habitat reduction has now been relegated to the wildest regions of North America, Europe and Northern Asia. In some of the United States the grey wolf is protected by the Endangered Species Act but no such protection exists across the border in Canada. The grey wolf is a keystone predator, reducing their numbers or eradicating them from an area destroys the ecological balance. Nowhere has this effect been so dramatically seen as Yellowstone National Park where the eradication of the grey wolf resulted in the loss of many species and a complete change in the landscape. The reintroduction of the grey wolf and the subsequent recovery of the Yellowstone ecosystem is touted as one of the most successful environmental recovery initiatives. This grey wolf, Maya, resides at the Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre in Golden, British Columbia, Canada. Here they .work to educate the public on the importance the grey wolf has in maintaining the ecological balance.